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Transformers struggle with "impossible" languages due to generation failures

A new research paper investigates why transformer language models, like GPT-2, struggle with "impossible" languages that humans can acquire. The study found that while these models show some sensitivity to grammaticality, they exhibit significant deficiencies in generating high-quality, longer sentences. This suggests that generative failures, rather than grammatical insensitivity, may be the primary reason these models cannot process such unnatural languages. AI

IMPACT Suggests limitations in current transformer architectures for handling complex linguistic structures, potentially guiding future model development.

RANK_REASON Research paper published on arXiv detailing findings about transformer language models.

Read on arXiv cs.CL →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 2 sources. How we write summaries →

Transformers struggle with "impossible" languages due to generation failures

COVERAGE [2]

  1. arXiv cs.AI TIER_1 English(EN) · Ram Janarthan, Coleman Haley, Sharon Goldwater ·

    When transformers learn "impossible" languages, what do they learn?

    arXiv:2606.30815v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Recent work suggests that transformer language models show a bias towards human languages over unnatural ("impossible") languages argued to be unacquirable by humans. However, this literature has largely based these claims on diff…

  2. arXiv cs.CL TIER_1 English(EN) · Sharon Goldwater ·

    When transformers learn "impossible" languages, what do they learn?

    Recent work suggests that transformer language models show a bias towards human languages over unnatural ("impossible") languages argued to be unacquirable by humans. However, this literature has largely based these claims on differences in sample efficiency and test-set perplexi…